March for Unconditional AmnestyCelebrating International Workers DayNo Work, No Shopping, No School -- Join the March for Amnesty!Tues. May 1, 12noonGather at Dolores Park, (Dolores & 18th St) San Francisco, March to Civic Center, 1pm rally

then...

VIGIL FOR UNCONDITIONAL AMNESTY AND OPEN BORDERSTUESDAY, MAY 1, 7-9:00 P.M.24TH STREET AND MISSION STREET, SAN FRANCISCOSPONSORED BY BARRIO UNIDOS415-431-9925

On May 17, 2007 Mumia Abu-Jamal's lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, will present oral arguments to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. Despite a mountain of evidence of his innocence, a U.S. criminal "justice" system saturated with race and class bias has reduced his case to just four issues: exclusion of Blacks from the jury panel, racial bias, improper instructions to the jury regarding the death penalty and prosecutorial misconduct.

In a 1982 frame-up trial that has been condemned by groups and individuals including Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the NAACP, the National Lawyers Guild, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, President Jacques Chirac of France, the Congressional Black Caucus, hundreds of U.S. and international trade unions and the Detroit, San Francisco, and Paris, France city councils, Mumia was falsely convicted of the murder of a Philadelphia police officer.

Six eyewitnesses stated that the realkiller fled the murder scene whileMumia himself was found near dead next to the slain police officer.Critical evidence of Mumia's innocence was destroyed or withheld."Witnesses" never at the murder scene were coerced to state that they werepresent. Police distorted events and material evidence at the murder scene. Mumia himself was excluded from the majority of his own trial.

Mumia was the victim of a political frame-up. He is an award-winningjournalist, whose widely-respected social commentaries are today broadcaston 124 radio stations. In 1981, as a radio commentator and President of thePhiladelphia Association of Black Journalists, he was a leading human rights critic of the Philadelphia Police Department, many of whose officers had been indicted and convicted on charges of corruption, witness intimidation and the planting of evidence.

Mumia's judge, Albert Sabo, was overheard by court stenographer, TerriMaurer Carter, to say in his antechambers about Mumia, "Yeah, and I'm goingto help 'em fry the n----r."

Mumia has been on death row nearly 25 years. He has become a worldwide symbol inthe fight against the barbaric and racist death penalty. Pennsylvaniaauthorities seek, for the third time, to impose the death penalty andmurder Mumia by lethal injection. We must make the political price of thisexecution and continued incarceration too high to pay. We stand with Mumia ashe fights for his legal right to a new trial and for his life and freedom.

Join us in Philadelphia on Thursday, May 17, 9:30 am at the U.S.Courthouse, 6th and Market Streets, Philadelphia. On the East Coast call:215-476-8812. On the West Coast, we mobilize at the U.S. Court of AppealsBuilding, 7th Street and Mission, San Francisco, 4-6 pm. Call: 415-255-1085

3) Bush Presses Schools Plan During Trip to New York[Bush pushes reauthorization of No Child Left Behind Law, "...which, among other things, ties federal school financing to performance-based results over time, measured by annual, standardized tests." Unfortunately, it also ties Federalschool funds to allowing each branch of the military accessto the schools and the students--two recruitersfrom each branch of the military, in fact--for the purposesof recruitment--each time a College, University, Technical or other schools such as beauty and culinary schools; or Union apprentice programs; or special scholarship opportunitiesare presented to students at any time. The military is alsoallowed access to schools from kindergarten up. Just readthe U.S. Army School Recruiting Program Handbook availableat www.bauaw.org. There is also a link to the text of thecurrent No Child Left Behind Law at our site...bw]By JIM RUTENBERGApril 25, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/washington/25bush.html?ref=us

As a Cherokee woman charging rape by a non-Indian, Jami Rozell could not go to the tribal court, which handles only crimes by Indians against Indians in Indian country. So after five months of agonizing, she went to the district attorney in Tahlequah, Okla., and testified at a preliminary hearing.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, get up there in front of my family with all these men I’ve grown up with all my life,” said Ms. Rozell, now 25 and a first grade teacher in another town. But that was not the worst of it. The police, she said she was soon told, had cleaned up the evidence room and thrown out her rape kit, and with it all chances of prosecution.

However, Chief Stephen Farmer of the Tahlequah police says the department had received permission to destroy the evidence after Ms. Rozell initially declined to press charges.

Human rights advocates say such troubled cases involving Indian victims are common. And, American Indian women are voicing growing anger at what they call their disproportionate victimization in crimes of sexual assault, most often committed by non-Indians, and attitudes and laws that they say deter many from even reporting an attack.

“Indian women suffer two and a half times more domestic violence, three and a half times more sexual assaults, and 17 percent will be stalked — and I’m a victim of all three,” said Pauline Musgrove, executive director of the Spirits of Hope Coalition, an advocacy group in Oklahoma.

Now Amnesty International has taken up the issue, calling on Congress to extend tribal authority to all offenders on Indian land, not just Indians, and to expand federal spending on Indian law enforcement and health clinics.

In a report released yesterday, the American arm of the organization said sexual violence against American Indians had grown out of a long history of “systematic and pervasive abuse and persecution.”

Chris Chaney, deputy director of the office of justice services at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and a member of the Seneca-Cayuga tribe of Oklahoma, said that Indians fell victim to crime at a higher rate than members of any other ethnic group and that domestic violence was on the rise because of methamphetamine abuse.

But Mr. Chaney said that the bureau recognized the problem and that the new federal budget proposed an increase of $16 million to aid Indian law enforcement agencies.

With just over 4 million American Indian and Alaska Native people in 550 federally recognized tribes scattered over Indian and non-Indian lands throughout the United States, jurisdictional questions often throw cases into limbo, Amnesty International found. In cases where tribal courts have jurisdiction, they can only impose punishments of up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. The report cited Justice Department figures suggesting that more than one in three American Indian and Alaska Native women would be raped in their lifetime, almost double the national average of 18 percent.

In 86 percent of the cases, the report said, the perpetrators were non-Indian men, while in the population at large, the attacker and victim are usually from the same ethnic group.

Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said the organization had been studying violence against women worldwide “and then somebody said why not look at what’s happening here.”

The 73-page report focused on Indian communities in Alaska, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

Alaska has the highest incidence of forcible rapes of all women, the report said, and Native Alaskans in Anchorage were nearly 10 times more likely to be victims of sexual assault than non-natives. Oklahoma’s 401,000 American Indians (according to 2005 Census estimates that include people listing mixed racial heritages) share 39 tribal governments and a patchwork of Indian and non-Indian lands; there are no reservations in Oklahoma, which is second only to California in its Indian population.

At Help in Crisis, a shelter for Indian women and their children in Tahlequah in eastern Oklahoma, many told of suffering assaults, often by husbands, without filing complaints.

Among them was Kendra Hunter, 25, who said she had been raped by three white men who held her captive for three days in 2001. Ms. Hunter said that she did report it, but that police officers turned away the complaint, saying that the sex was consensual and that with three witnesses against her, there was no chance of a case. “I had cigarette burns on me, and they called it consensual,” she said.

Deana Franke, director of the shelter, showed off an exercise room she had built for the women but added, “I should be building a shooting range.”

Nearby in Tahlequah, at offices of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, the director, Sonya K. Cochran, and two advocates, Lois Fuller and Sue Gaytan, displayed the legal records of a local Indian woman who complained of having been raped and sodomized by a brother-and-sister team of attackers in Fort Smith, Ark., in 2004, only to have the charges dropped after a prosecutor said the woman had repeatedly missed court dates. The woman contends she was in court.

Culturally, some advocates said, Indians, fearing humiliation, are often reluctant to press a complaint, seeing it as a test of faith or preferring to “let the creator take care of it,” as one said.

The jurisdictional complexities were evident outside the offices of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Shawnee. A nearby fast-food drive-in stands on state land, the north lane of the road is on city land and the south lane is Potawatomi land, where Jason O’Neal, chief of the Lighthorse Police of the Chickasaw Nation, has jurisdiction.

Chief O’Neal said that increasingly, Indian and non-Indian police departments are recognizing each other with cross-designations of authority.

But even on Indian land, if a crime is committed by, or suffered by, a non-Indian, federal law applies — except in states (not including Oklahoma) where such jurisdiction has been ceded to the state. Yet tribal courts enjoy concurrent jurisdiction when the crime is committed by an Indian, regardless of the victim, on Indian land. And the federal government retains jurisdiction over 14 major crimes, including rape, committed by Indians in Indian country. Another problem is figuring out just who is an Indian — an enrolled member of a tribe, for sure, and less certainly, anyone a tribe considers Indian, but beyond that definitions blur.

“I can’t get a U.S. attorney to take a domestic violence case unless there’s severe physical harm or use of a deadly weapon,” said Kelly Stoner, director of the Native American Legal Resource Center at the Oklahoma City University School of Law. “If you just knock a tooth out it’s not enough.”

Renée Brewer, a child welfare and family violence counselor at the Potawatomi Nation and a member of the Creek Muskogee tribe, said she recently had four agencies arguing over jurisdiction after a woman from the Absentee Shawnee Nation called 911 to say she had been raped.

“The D.A. was so confused,” Ms. Brewer said. The woman eventually left the state. And the accused rapist? “Oh, he walked,” Ms. Brewer said.

With a large increase in the minimum wage and a handful of other measures to raise the income of low-end workers, the United States could cut the number of people living in poverty by half within a decade, a report from a liberal research group says.

The antipoverty strategy, which would cost the government $90 billion a year, was developed over the last year by a group of economists, poverty experts and leaders of labor and community groups. It is to be issued today by the Center for American Progress in Washington. It is likely to be a fount of ideas for Congress, where Democratic control has led to new interest in fighting poverty and for candidates, especially Democrats, in the presidential campaign.

According to federal data, 37 million residents lived below the poverty line in 2005, defined as an income of $20,000 a year for a family of four.

The new strategy reflects a change in the political climate since the welfare overhaul of 1996. That put strict limits on cash welfare that many experts said had reduced incentives to work. The new strategy emphasizes measures to promote work and would use tax credits and other measures to bolster the incomes of low-wage workers.

Peter B. Edelman, a co-chairman of the group and a professor of law at Georgetown University who advised the Clinton administration on social policy, cited the antipoverty initiatives of Mayors Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, a Republican, and Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, a Democrat, as evidence of a growing and widely shared concern.

Many of the proposals in the report seem unlikely to fly unless a Democrat is in the White House.

The panel argues that although the $90 billion price tag may appear unrealistic amid the current Congressional stalemate over taxes, rescinding tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would free more than the required dollars.

Other experts, including Douglas Besharov, a public policy scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, say that even the Democrats will be divided on using any money freed by tax changes and that reducing the alternative minimum tax for the middle class may, for example, have a higher priority than the proposed strategy.

Citing studies by the Urban Institute, the report says steps in three areas, costing the government $50 billion a year, would reduce poverty 26 percent, or nine million people.

First is an increase in the minimum wage to half the average hourly wage. Congress has just agreed to raise the minimum wage, to $7.25 an hour by 2009 from its current $5.15 an hour. By the report’s standard, the wage would have reached $8.40 in 2006 and be higher in future years.

Research indicates that such an increase would eliminate a relatively small number of jobs, the institute said, while lifting the incomes of more than 4.5 million poor workers and nine million people whose incomes are just above the poverty line.

Second, the report calls for expanding the earned-income tax credit and the child care credit. The earned-income tax credit for childless workers and noncustodial parents, in particular, which is now negligible, would increase along with credits for working families. That would reduce the number of poor by two million.

Third, expanding child care subsidies for families with incomes below $40,000 a year and expanding the child care tax credit would raise employment and help lift nearly three million people out of poverty, the study forecasts.

3) Bush Presses Schools Plan During Trip to New York[Bush pushes reauthorization of No Child Left Behind Law, "...which, among other things, ties federal school financing to performance-based results over time, measured by annual, standardized tests." Unfortunately, it also ties Federalschool funds to allowing each branch of the military accessto the schools and the students--two recruitersfrom each branch of the military, in fact--for the purposesof recruitment--each time a College, University, Technical or other schools such as beauty and culinary schools; or Union apprentice programs; or special scholarship opportunitiesare presented to students at any time. The military is alsoallowed access to schools from kindergarten up. Just readthe U.S. Army School Recruiting Program Handbook availableat www.bauaw.org. There is also a link to the text of thecurrent No Child Left Behind Law at our site...bw]By JIM RUTENBERGApril 25, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/washington/25bush.html?ref=us

President Bush fought with the Democrats over war financing yesterday morning. But in the afternoon he came to Harlem to seek common cause with the rival party, on its home turf, on his signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind.

The trip gave the president a chance to joke with Representative Charles B. Rangel, usually a Democratic nemesis, who rode with him in the presidential limousine to Harlem and to praise Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York schools and a former Clinton administration official.

“You know, the people in Harlem have got a fantastic congressman in Charles Rangel,” Mr. Bush said, speaking in the auditorium of the Harlem Village Academy Charter School. “He can agree with me a few more times, but — I don’t expect him to — but I do expect him to do what he does, which is work for the good of the country.”

After complimenting Mr. Klein on the school system, Mr. Bush, who was soundly defeated in the city in the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, said, “As a result of that endorsement, he may never find work again in New York.”

The contrast in mood from the morning was part of the new normal for Mr. Bush as he adjusts to life with an adversarial Congress controlled by Democrats and populated with restive Republicans.

Even as he battles Democrats over war financing, he must rely on them for help winning approval of major domestic initiatives like his proposed immigration law overhaul and the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law, which, among other things, ties federal school financing to performance-based results over time, measured by annual, standardized tests.

Mr. Bush views the legislation, passed with help from Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, as a legacy project. But, like so many other parts of his agenda, it is coming under fire in Congress.

A group of Republicans is pushing legislation that would free states from the law’s mandates, and they have some Democratic support. Other Democrats, including Mr. Kennedy, are seeking various changes, including higher financing levels.

The White House still views Mr. Kennedy as a crucial ally, and, Mr. Bush said at the Harlem school, “When we put our mind to it, actually Republicans and Democrats can work together — we did so to get this important piece of legislation passed.”

But, he warned, “When Republicans and Democrats take a look at this bill, I strongly urge them to not weaken the bill, not to backslide, not to say, accountability isn’t that important.”

Mr. Bush was speaking at a charter school — privately run with public money — in which the Bloomberg administration takes pride because of the sharp improvements in its students’ test scores.

Mr. Bush hailed those scores, saying, “We can see that No Child Left Behind is working nationwide.”

[Like any private school, they can simply drop studentsthat fail. This is the reason for their "success rate."...bw]

The most enticing property yet found outside our solar system is about 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra, a team of European astronomers said yesterday.

The astronomers have discovered a planet five times as massive as the Earth orbiting a dim red star known as Gliese 581.

It is the smallest of the 200 or so planets that are known to exist outside of our solar system, the extrasolar or exo-planets. It orbits its home star within the so-called habitable zone where surface water, the staff of life, could exist if other conditions are right, said Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory.

“We are at the right place for that,” said Dr. Udry, the lead author of a paper describing the discovery that has been submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

But he and other astronomers cautioned that it was far too soon to conclude that liquid water was there without more observations. Sara Seager, a planet expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, “For example, if the planet had an atmosphere more massive than Venus’s, then the surface would likely be too hot for liquid water.”

Nevertheless, the discovery in the Gliese 581 system, where a Neptune-size planet was discovered two years ago and another planet of eight Earth masses is now suspected, catapults that system to the top of the list for future generations of space missions.

“On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X,” said Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University in France, according to a news release from the European Southern Observatory, a multinational collaboration based in Garching, Germany.

Dimitar Sasselov of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who studies the structure and formation of planets, said: “It’s 20 light-years. We can go there.”

The new planet was discovered by the wobble it causes in its home star’s motion as it orbits, using the method by which most of the known exo-planets have been discovered. Dr. Udry’s team used an advanced spectrograph on a 141-inch-diameter telescope at the European observatory in La Silla, Chile.

The planet, Gliese 581c, circles the star every 13 days at a distance of about seven million miles. According to models of planet formation developed by Dr. Sasselov and his colleagues, such a planet should be about half again as large as the Earth and composed of rock and water, what the astronomers now call a “super Earth.”

The most exciting part of the find, Dr. Sasselov said, is that it “basically tells you these kinds of planets are very common.” Because they could stay geologically active for billions of years, he said he suspected that such planets could be even more congenial for life than Earth. Although the new planet is much closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun, the red dwarf Gliese 581 is only about a hundredth as luminous as the Sun. So seven million miles is a comfortable huddling distance.

How hot the planet gets, Dr. Udry said, depends on how much light the planet reflects, its albedo. Using the Earth and Venus as two extreme examples, he estimated that temperatures on the surface of the planet should be in the range of 0 degrees to 40 degrees centigrade.

“It’s just right in the good range,” Dr. Udry said. “Of course, we don’t know anything about its albedo.”

One problem is that the wobble technique only gives masses of planets. To measure their actual size and thus find their densities, astronomers have to catch the planets in the act of passing in front of or behind their stars. Such transits can also reveal if the planets have atmospheres and what they are made of.

Dr. Udry said he and Dr. Sasselov would be observing the Gliese system with a Canadian space telescope named MOST to see if there are any dips in starlight caused by the new planet. Failing that, they said, the best chance for more information about the system lies with the Terrestrial Planet Finder, a NASA mission, and the Darwin missions of the European Space Agency, which are designed to study Earthlike planets, but have been delayed by political, technical and financial difficulties.

The real story bubbling within the auto industry is not the news that Toyota vaulted over General Motors in worldwide auto sales. Rather, it's the growing ideological--not economic--drumbeat that is gathering targeting the livelihoods of tens of thousands of auto workers. And this is a direct attack against a decent standard of living for every worker. That means you!

The ideological assault goes something like this: American auto companies are in trouble. The trouble is caused by "generous" benefits paid to auto workers. Solution: cut those benefits to save the auto companies.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal typified the rhetoric that I've been seeing for some time now, rhetoric that has picked up in the past few months and is certain to get even louder. In a piece on DaimlerChrysler, columnist Dennis Berman wrote:

"Forget about making better cars. Or even about the rise of private equity. The best way to understand the sale of Chrysler Group is as blood sport between parent DaimlerChrylser and its North American unions.

"Is DaimlerChrysler willing to get fully ruthless with its employees, in spite of its well-hewn image as loveable corporate citizen? The answer will make for some gripping theater in the months ahead. That is because this deal really is about persuading the company's unions to roll back their own health and pension benefits."

I want to explain why these attacks, by in large, are ideological, not economic, in nature. If they were economic, then, a whole other set of issues would be on the table beyond cutting rank-and-file workers pay, health care and pensions. Let's see how.

First, the real burden to auto companies is health care costs. If the auto executives and their counterparts actually dealt with the economics of health care--as opposed to ideology--they would wake up and be avid supporters for a single-payer health care plan. Enacted this year, such a plan would immediately lift off auto companies tens of billions of dollars--that's BILLIONS--in health care costs for current and, most notable, retired workers.

This is nothing new. Almost two years ago, I cited General Motors as the prime example of a company that should be arguing that single-payer health care is an economic necessity. Many others have made that point before and since. And, yet...these guys are unwilling to break from their ideological framework, even though the economics are unassailable.

Second, it is not rank-and-file workers pensions that are causing a financial problem for auto companies, or, for that matter, many other big companies. CEO pensions are the problem. I pointed this out last summer by highlighting a terrific article in the Wall Street Journal. Here are two snippets from that article:

"Even as many reduce, freeze or eliminate pensions for workers -- complaining of the costs -- their executives are building up ever-bigger pensions, causing the companies' financial obligations for them to balloon.

"Companies disclose little about any of this. But a Wall Street Journal analysis of corporate filings reveals that executive benefits are playing a large and hidden role in the declining health of America's pensions. Among the findings:

"- Boosted by surging pay and rich formulas, executive pension obligations exceed $1 billion at some companies. Besides GM, they include General Electric Co. (a $3.5 billion liability); AT&T Inc. ($1.8 billion); Exxon Mobil Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. (about $1.3 billion each); and Bank of America Corp. and Pfizer Inc. (about $1.1 billion apiece). "- Benefits for executives now account for a significant share of pension obligations in the U.S., an average of 8% at the companies above. Sometimes a company's obligation for a single executive's pension approaches $100 million.

"- These liabilities are largely hidden, because corporations don't distinguish them from overall pension obligations in their federal financial filings.

"- As a result, the savings that companies make by curtailing pensions for regular retirees -- which have totaled billions of dollars in recent years -- can mask a rising cost of benefits for executives.

"- Executive pensions, even when they won't be paid till years from now, drag down earnings today. And they do so in a way that's disproportionate to their size, because they aren't funded with dedicated assets."

And...

"When General Motors cites retiree costs, the giant auto maker has a point: It owed nearly 700,000 U.S. workers and retirees pensions that totaled $87.8 billion at the end of last year.

"But $95.3 billion had already been set aside to pay those benefits when due.

"All of these assets are earning investment returns, which offset the pensions' expense. GM lost $10.6 billion in 2005. But deep as its losses have been, they would have been far worse without the more than $10 billion per year in investment income that the GM pension plan for the rank and file generates.

"The pension plan for GM executives is another matter. Unfunded to the tune of $1.4 billion, it detracts from GM's bottom line each year."

To underscore: workers pensions are funded, CEO pensions are not.

More recently, I also pointed out the vast CEO pension riches now coming to light because of new disclosure rules. So, the obvious solution is to first cut CEO pay and pensions deeply. If you want economic solutions, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, go where the money is.

Third, as a matter of economics--and, to be fair, a tad of ideology--it's worth noting what auto workers "generous" pensions amount to: an average of $32,000 if you worked 30 years and retired. And that monthly payment by the companyGOES DOWN once a worker begins to collect Social Security.

It's ironic that the ideologues are calling for cuts in auto worker pensions, of all places. After all, it was Henry Ford himself who used to say that he wanted to pay his workers enough money so they could buy Ford cars. Exactly how do the ideologues think retired auto workers, not to mention other workers, will be able to participate as consumers in the fall and winter of their lives if they are asked to live on less even as expenses like health care, rent and gas go up?

And that's where this all comes back to you. We all need to see the coming attack against auto workers as a direct attack on the ability of average people to make a fair wage and retire with dignity and respect. The attack against auto workers will be lead by the same voices who have fashioned a global economy with rules that enrich a few and impoverish the many; the same people who have created, in our country, the chasm between rich and poor and the obscene spectacle of CEO legalized robbery with very little resistance from our elected leaders.

Our response has to be very clear: The auto worker pension is not the "gold" standard. It is the decent and fair standard.

One of the distinctive features of the modern American right has been nostalgia for the late 19th century, with its minimal taxation, absence of regulation and reliance on faith-based charity rather than government social programs. Conservatives from Milton Friedman to Grover Norquist have portrayed the Gilded Age as a golden age, dismissing talk of the era’s injustice and cruelty as a left-wing myth.

Well, in at least one respect, everything old is new again. Income inequality — which began rising at the same time that modern conservatism began gaining political power — is now fully back to Gilded Age levels.

Consider a head-to-head comparison. We know what John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in Gilded Age America, made in 1894, because in 1895 he had to pay income taxes. (The next year, the Supreme Court declared the income tax unconstitutional.) His return declared an income of $1.25 million, almost 7,000 times the average per capita income in the United States at the time.

But that makes him a mere piker by modern standards. Last year, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, James Simons, a hedge fund manager, took home $1.7 billion, more than 38,000 times the average income. Two other hedge fund managers also made more than $1 billion, and the top 25 combined made $14 billion.

How much is $14 billion? It’s more than it would cost to provide health care for a year to eight million children — the number of children in America who, unlike children in any other advanced country, don’t have health insurance.

The hedge fund billionaires are simply extreme examples of a much bigger phenomenon: every available measure of income concentration shows that we’ve gone back to levels of inequality not seen since the 1920s.

The New Gilded Age doesn’t feel quite as harsh and unjust as the old Gilded Age — not yet, anyway. But that’s because the effects of inequality are still moderated by progressive income taxes, which fall more heavily on the rich than on the middle class; by estate taxation, which limits the inheritance of great wealth; and by social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which provide a safety net for the less fortunate.

You might have thought that in the face of growing inequality, there would have been a move to reinforce these moderating institutions — to raise taxes on the rich and use the money to strengthen the safety net. That’s why comparing the incomes of hedge fund managers with the cost of children’s health care isn’t an idle exercise: there’s a real trade-off involved. But for the past three decades, such trade-offs have been consistently settled in favor of the haves and have-mores.

Taxation has become much less progressive: according to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, average tax rates on the richest 0.01 percent of Americans have been cut in half since 1970, while taxes on the middle class have risen. In particular, the unearned income of the wealthy — dividends and capital gains — is now taxed at a lower rate than the earned income of most middle-class families.

Those hedge fund titans, by the way, have an especially sweet deal: loopholes in the law let them use their own businesses as, in effect, unlimited 401(k)s, sheltering their earnings and accumulating tax-free capital gains.

Meanwhile, the tax-cut bill Congress passed in 2001 set in motion a complete phaseout of the estate tax. If the Bush administration hadn’t been too clever by half, hiding the true cost of its tax cuts by making the whole package expire at the end of 2010, we’d be well on our way toward becoming a dynastic society.

And as for the social insurance programs —— well, in 2005 the Bush administration tried to privatize Social Security. If it had succeeded, Medicare would have been next.

Of course, the administration’s attempt to undo Social Security was a notable failure. The public, it seems, isn’t eager to return to the days before the New Deal. And the G.O.P.’s defeat in the midterm election has put on hold other plans to restore the good old days.

But it’s much too soon to declare the march toward a New Gilded Age over. If history is any guide, one of these days we’ll see the emergence of a New Progressive Era, maybe even a New New Deal. But it may be a long wait.

7) After the LawyersEditorialApril 27, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/opinion/27fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

It can be hard to tell whom the Bush administration considers more of an enemy at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp: the prisoners or the lawyers.

William Glaberson reported in The Times yesterday that the Justice Department had asked a federal appeals court to remove some of the last shreds of legal representation available to the prisoners.

The government wants the court to allow intelligence and military officers to read the mail sent by lawyers to their clients at Guantánamo Bay. Lawyers would also be limited to three visits with each client, and an inmate would be allowed only a single visit to decide whether to authorize an attorney to handle his case. Interrogators at Guantánamo Bay have a history of masking their identities, so the rule would make it much harder than it already is to gain the trust of a prisoner.

Perhaps the most outrageous of the Justice Department’s proposals would allow government officials — on their own authority — to deny lawyers access to the evidence used to decide whether an inmate is an illegal enemy combatant. Not even the appalling Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through in the last days of the Republican-controlled Congress, goes that far.

The filing, with the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., says lawyers have caused unrest among the prisoners and improperly relayed messages to the news media. The administration offered no evidence for these charges, probably because there is none. This is an assault on the integrity of the lawyers, reminiscent of a former Pentagon official’s suggestion that they are unpatriotic and that American corporations should boycott their firms.

The Justice Department also said lawyers had no right to demand access to clients at Guantánamo Bay because the clients are “detained aliens on a secure military base in a foreign country.”

The Supreme Court has already rejected that argument, and President Bush can hardly be worried about the sensibilities of Fidel Castro’s government. (The camp is on land leased to Washington after the Spanish-American War.)

It’s obvious why the administration is attacking the lawyers. It does not want the world to know more than it already does about this immoral detention camp. And brave lawyers have helped expose abuse and torture there, as well as detentions of innocent men — who are a large portion, if not a majority, of the inmates at Guantánamo Bay. The Bush administration does not want these issues aired in public, and certainly not in court.

Mr. Bush thinks that he has the right to ignore the Constitution when it suits him. But this is a nation of laws, not the whims of men, and giving legal rights to the guilty as well as the innocent is a price of true justice. The only remedy is for lawmakers to rewrite the Military Commissions Act to restore basic rights to Guantánamo Bay and to impose full accountability for what has happened there.

LODI, Calif., April 24 — Khalid Farooq has shunned the low-slung yellow bungalow that serves as the Pakistani community’s mosque here for nearly two years, ever since a father and son who worshiped there were arrested on suspicion of being foot soldiers for Al Qaeda.

If he runs an errand at someplace like Wal-Mart, away from the neat, tree-lined streets that constitute the heart of Lodi’s Pakistani neighborhood, Mr. Farooq trades his traditional baggy clothes for standard American attire, he said, as often as four times in one day.

“Something has changed in the air; it’s a scary time,” said Mr. Farooq, who first arrived to work in the flat, black fields that surround this town 25 years ago. “We don’t want to talk; we’re all afraid.”

The tide of fear rolled in and has never quite receded after an informant incriminated two Lodi men, Umer Hayat, an ice cream truck driver, and his son Hamid, who were arrested in June 2005. Their trial ended a year ago with the younger Mr. Hayat, 24, convicted of providing material support for terrorism by attending a training camp in Pakistan. His lawyers recently began seeking a new trial based on arguments that the jury was tainted.

Members of the Pakistani community here distrust one another almost as much as they do outsiders. Even now, residents with evidence of sudden wealth, like a new car, are immediately rumored to be on the F.B.I.’s payroll. Anything connected to the government is inherently suspect.

Some people have stopped home visits by social service agencies; others have balked at writing their Social Security numbers on government documents. Some residents returning from Pakistan avoid including their Lodi addresses on their United States customs forms.

“You don’t use the word ‘terrorist’; you don’t use the word ‘bomb,’ because people’s ears are up instantly,” said Taj Khan, a retired engineer and an unsuccessful candidate for the Lodi City Council. “People are looking at each other with suspicion to see who is the F.B.I. informant, who will rat on whom?”

All terrorism charges were dropped against Umer Hayat, 48, who was sentenced to time served after pleading guilty to lying about the amount of money he took out of the country.

The case against Hamid Hayat was built around his confessions as well as testimony from the informant, who was paid about $225,000 after telling the Federal Bureau of Investigation the somewhat improbable story that Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, once visited the Lodi mosque.

Nobody in the Pakistani community here seems to believe that the Hayats, both American citizens, were guilty of anything beyond bad judgment. Even the prosecutor in the case, McGregor W. Scott, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of California, while endorsing the conviction, has expressed regret about using the Qaeda label.

But that hardly dilutes the sense of fear and isolation. Lodi, a city of 62,000 people 72 miles east of San Francisco, is something of an anomaly among Pakistani immigrants. Most come to the United States to pursue professional careers, to become doctors or academics in large cities. But mainly rural peasants started coming to Lodi around 1920, and residents say 80 percent of the town’s 2,500 Muslims are Pakistanis.

They came as agricultural laborers and never really assimilated, preserving their traditional ways by dispatching the young back home for arranged marriages.

“Our parents get us married too quick. You get married and you don’t go to school and you don’t learn anything,” said Usama Ismail, the younger Mr. Hayat’s 21-year-old cousin, who sometimes stumbles over words as he translates street slang into regular English. “If you have a son or a daughter who gets engaged back in Pakistan, at least one parent is going to be illiterate, and if the man is illiterate, he will definitely kick it with the people from back home.”

Robina Asghar was a teenage bride who sometimes waxes nostalgic about the smell of the orange groves in her native village. But she earned college degrees here and became an accomplished social worker.

“We are so fearful about preserving the culture that we don’t build the bridges to learn how to survive in the larger community,” Mrs. Asghar said. “We isolated ourselves.”

One of the strongest elements in that culture is that men and women do not mingle in public. Many Pakistani girls in Lodi are taken out of the school system and taught at home once they reach puberty, school officials said. There are no Pakistani restaurants and just two shops, one selling fabric and the other a grocery specializing in items like the half-white, half-wheat flour needed to make naan bread.

Razia Farooq, Mr. Farooq’s wife, sells gauzy bolts of fabric in pink and tangerine and lavender. The small-town banter from other Lodi residents evaporated after the arrests, Mrs. Farooq said, with any woman walking on the street in her traditional clothes likely to hear “Why don’t you go back to your own country!” shouted with expletives from a passing car.

Her store is unmarked, and after the arrests she installed blinds because customers worried that anyone passing might notice Pakistanis and do something violent.

Mr. Ismail said that people shushed him when he mentioned the Hayats on the telephone, and that high school students grew instantly leery of anyone asking questions.

“If somebody asks something personal like how many kids in your family, they will shut up and walk away,” he said.

It is a form of paranoia to point fingers at everyone, Mr. Ismail admitted, but his cousin’s fate is the dire model. “My cousin is locked up because of what he said, not because of what he did, so that is going through their heads,” he said.

Among high school students, two reactions to what happened to the Hayats predominated. First, Mr. Ismail said, it engendered a certain sense of pride and solidarity.

“The feds came over here and they went after little kids, teenagers,” he said. “At most the kids might have been pot heads or thieves, but they were trying to label them as terrorists and they were following all of us around.”

On the other hand, verbal harassment also spawned a gang, the O.P.C., or Original Pakistani Clique, whose members take on any student who calls a Pakistani a terrorist in the hallways of Lodi High.

The tension builds upon an already deep split over control of the mosque; indeed, many suspect that one faction may have brought in the F.B.I. to smear its rivals. Two imams imported from Pakistan, the initial targets of the federal investigation involving the Hayats, were expelled on immigration charges. One faction accused them of developing a school and Islamic center that would teach radical Islam. The other faction believes that the group controlling the mosque was jealous of the budding center, so its members concocted the story and might similarly denounce others.

“That’s a bunch of baloney,” said Nick Qayyum, the mosque’s secretary. “People are using this for their own purposes.”

The ruckus at the mosque every Friday prompted scores of worshipers to defect some months back, and they now hold congregational prayers in a church. Umer Hayat is among them.

Others are moving away altogether, viewing the prospect of life with relatives in North Carolina or Texas as better than being stained by what they call Lodi’s undeserved reputation.

“Once your name is out there, I don’t know how that will ever go away,” said Shakila Khan, who runs social programs here.

ATLANTA, April 26 — After the fatal police shooting of an elderly woman in a botched drug raid, the United States attorney here said Thursday that prosecutors were investigating a “culture of misconduct” in the Atlanta Police Department.

In court documents, prosecutors said Atlanta police officers regularly lied to obtain search warrants and fabricated documentation of drug purchases, as they had when they raided the home of the woman, Kathryn Johnston, in November, killing her in a hail of bullets.

Narcotics officers have admitted to planting marijuana in Ms. Johnston’s home after her death and submitting as evidence cocaine they falsely claimed had been bought at her house, according to the court filings.

Two of the three officers indicted in the shooting, Gregg Junnier and Jason R. Smith, pleaded guilty on Thursday to state charges including involuntary manslaughter and federal charges of conspiracy to violate Ms. Johnston’s civil rights.

“Former officers Junnier and Smith will also help us continue our very active ongoing investigation into just how wide the culture of misconduct that led to this tragedy extends within the Atlanta Police Department,” said David Nahmias, the United States attorney.

Asked how widespread such practices might be, Mr. Nahmias said investigators were looking at narcotics officers, officers who had once served in the narcotics unit and “officers that had never been in that unit but may have adopted that practice.”

The investigation has already led to scrutiny of criminal cases involving the indicted officers and others who may have used similar tactics. Paul Howard, the Fulton County district attorney, said his office was reviewing at least 100 cases involving the three officers, including 10 in which defendants were in jail.

If they continue to cooperate, Mr. Junnier, who retired after the shooting, faces a minimum of 10 years in prison and Mr. Smith, who resigned Thursday, faces 12 years.

The third officer, Arthur Tesler, declined a plea deal. He was indicted on charges of violation of oath by a public officer, making false statements and false imprisonment under color of legal process.

Mr. Tesler’s lawyer, John Garland, said his client was following his training when he put false claims in an affidavit.

Mr. Nahmias took a moment to dwell on what he said was the unusual nature of the officers’ offenses.

“The officers charged today were not corrupt in the sense that we have seen before,” he said. “They are not accused of seeking payoffs or trying to rob drug dealers or trying to protect gang members. Their goal was to arrest drug dealers and seize illegal drugs, and that’s what we want our police officers to do for our community.

“But these officers pursued that goal by corrupting the justice system, because when it was hard to do their job the way the Constitution requires, they let the ends justify their means.”

Mr. Nahmias said the statement in the plea agreement that officers cut corners in order to “be considered productive officers and to meet A.P.D.’s performance targets” reflected their perception of the department’s expectations.

The police chief, Richard Pennington, said that officers were not trained to lie and that they had no performance quotas. Two weeks ago, he announced changes to the narcotics squad, including increasing the unit’s size and more careful reviews of requests for so-called no-knock warrants like the one served on Ms. Johnston’s home.

“Let me assure you, if we find out any other officers have been involved in such egregious acts, they will be dealt with just as sternly as these other officers have been,” said Chief Pennington, who after the shooting asked for a review by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “I assure you that we will not tolerate any officers violating the law and mistreating our citizens in this city.”

The death of Ms. Johnston, whose age is listed variously as 88 or 92, outraged Atlantans, brought simmering discontent with police conduct toward residents to a boil and led to the creation of a civilian review board for the Police Department.

The day she was killed, narcotics officers said, they arrested a drug dealer who said he could tell them where to recover a kilogram of cocaine, and pointed out Ms. Johnston’s modest green-trimmed house at 933 Neal Street.

Instead of hiring an informant to try to buy drugs at the house, the officers filed for a search warrant, claiming that drugs had been bought there from a man named Sam. Because they falsely claimed that the house was equipped with surveillance equipment, they got a no-knock warrant that allowed them to break down the front door.

First, according to court papers, they pried off the burglar bars and began to ram open the door. Ms. Johnston, who lived alone, fired a single shot from a .38-caliber revolver through the front door and the officers fired back, killing her.

After the shooting, they handcuffed her and searched the house, finding no drugs.

“She was without question an innocent civilian who was caught in the worst circumstance imaginable,” Mr. Howard, the district attorney, said at a news conference on Thursday. “When we learned of her death, all of us imagined our own mothers and our own grandmothers in her place, and the thought made us shudder.”

When no drugs were found, the cover-up began in earnest, according to court papers.

Officer Smith planted three bags of marijuana, which had been recovered earlier in the day in an unrelated search, in the basement. He called a confidential informant and instructed him to pretend he had made the drug buy described in the affidavit for the search warrant.

The three officers, Mr. Junnier, Mr. Smith and Officer Tesler met to concoct a story before talking with homicide detectives, the court filings say.

Though the three met several more times, prosecutors said, Mr. Junnier admitted the truth in his first interview with F.B.I. agents. Mr. Smith at first lied about his role, but later admitted to the conspiracy.

LOS ANGELES, April 26 — In a move to ease chronic overcrowding, California lawmakers on Thursday approved the largest single prison construction program in the nation’s history and agreed to send 8,000 convicts to other states.

The plan, which would cost $8.3 billion and add 53,000 beds, has the strong backing of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, who is eager to avert a federal takeover of the state’s prison system, one of the most dysfunctional in the nation.

California prisons are so overcrowded — 16,000 inmates are assigned cots in hallways and gyms — that the governor recently took the highly unusual step of declaring a state of emergency in the system. The state’s prisons house 173,000 inmates — far ahead of Texas, which has the next largest state prison system with 152,500 inmates — and has an $8 billion budget.

The California prisons are the subject of several lawsuits, their medical program is in federal receivership, and various other components of the system are under court monitoring. The courts had given the state until this spring to come up with an overpopulation plan or face possible receivership.

Under the plan that narrowly passed both houses of the Democratic-controlled State Legislature, the state will move prisoners out of 17,000 temporary beds in places like gymnasiums and day rooms, either through transfers to prisons in other states or to older, unused jails in California that need repairs to be brought up to building and safety codes.

The plan, aimed primarily at easing the prison population, would also free space for rehabilitative programs for inmates, lawmakers said.

Further, the state will add the 53,000 beds over the next five years by building additions to existing prisons and through construction of so-called re-entry centers, or smaller buildings where prisoners would spend the last few months of their sentences in the towns and cities where they would eventually be paroled.

The plan calls for two phases of construction, with the financing of the second phase contingent on benchmarks like the start of rehabilitation and mental health programs. The plan would be paid for over two phases with $7.1 billion in state bonds and $1.2 million in local money.

Missing from the plan were a proposed sentencing commission and a program to reduce the number of parolees who re-enter the system, components that had been embraced by Democratic lawmakers and prison reform advocates, and, this year, by the governor. Seven of 10 inmates released from California prisons return, one of the highest recidivism rates in the country.

But Mr. Schwarzenegger, made anxious by the watchful eyes of judges around the state, backed off the contentious proposals to change the parole structure and to examine sentencing practices, handing a victory to Republicans in the Legislature who would abide neither.

“The things we didn’t want to have in this bill are not in it,” said Senator George Runner, chairman of the Republican caucus in the Senate. “We need a program that keeps people incarcerated and tries to rehabilitate them. But if they can’t be rehabilitated, then we need enough beds to bring them back.”

The Democrats who ultimately voted for the plan despite its perceived shortcomings appeared to calculate that they would avoid looking soft on crime while leaving any legal fallout at the governor’s door.

The state had until the middle of May to convince the courts that it had a plan to relieve some of the overcrowding or face a takeover and the potential imposition of caps on the size of the prison population.

It was unclear on Thursday whether the bill would pass muster with the courts. For instance, recent moves by the state to send prisoners to other jurisdictions around the nation was ruled unconstitutional by a state judge; lawmakers said language in the new bill would address the judge’s concerns.

The plan also does little to change the structural problems that have led to overcrowding, like the unusual parole system, which sends former inmates with minor infractions back to prison. Further, the state’s sentencing structure is blind to the problem of prison population, meaning new inmates keep arriving regardless of the ability to accommodate them.

Don Specter, the director of the Prison Law Office, which has filed a class-action lawsuit against the state over prison conditions, said the plan did not address many of the most serious concerns raised in the courts.

Like many other states, California has had large prison building programs over the years, but few come close to the size or speed of this program. For example, since 1987 when Texas began to use general obligation bonds to build prisons, the state has used $2.3 billion in such bonds to do that.

Some California lawmakers who voted against the plan expressed outrage on Thursday.

“This is not a plan,” said the Senate majority leader, Gloria Romero, Democrat of Los Angeles. “This is a classic Hollywood prop that the governor wants to have when he walks into court on May 15. All we have done is dig ourselves into a deeper hole. This plan is not workable, and I fully expect a constitutional challenge.”

For his part, Mr. Schwarzenegger seemed ebullient.

“For the first time in a decade, we can add prison beds in California,” he said in a statement. “And that does not just include traditional beds. We will add beds with programs, education, drug and mental health treatment so that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation can truly live up to the rehabilitation part of its name.”

WASHINGTON, April 26 — The potential risk to humans who might have eaten meat contaminated with melamine is extremely low, and the Food and Drug Administration believes that only 6,000 hogs may have eaten the reconstituted feed.

But concern has shifted to encompass melamine-related compounds that include cyanuric acid, which can be used as a pool cleaner, and mixed with melamine could cause crystal formations that damage kidneys and could in some cases cause the organ to fail, an F.D.A. official said.

Melamine, a compound used to make plastic utensils and as a fertilizer in some countries, has been found in wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate that came from two Chinese suppliers starting as far back as July 2006.

On Thursday, a new recall was issued for food containing rice protein concentrate, said David Elder, the director of enforcement in the Office of Regulatory Affairs at the F.D.A. More than 100 pet foods have been recalled since March.

The majority of the 6,000 hogs thought to have eaten the contaminated product are still on the farms where they were raised, but the Department of Agriculture is still tracking down products from 345 hogs: 50 from a custom slaughterhouse in California that cannot be sold in retail, 195 from a farm in Kansas that were sent to a facility in Nebraska, and no more than 100 hogs from the processing plant in Utah, said Nicol Andrews, a spokeswoman for the department. It is not known if any of these hogs were eaten, she said.

Pork producers in California, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Utah are being investigated, and Oklahoma has been added to the list. It has been determined that the feed sent to Ohio predated the tainted food, and that state has been taken off the list. Swine that ate the adulterated product will be euthanized and farmers compensated for the animals. A feed mill in Missouri is still being investigated, Ms. Andrews said.

China, it was reported Thursday, has banned the use of melamine in food. The F.D.A. is preparing to send investigators to the country to track down the source of the melamine.

12) Police Subdue Man, Who DiesBy THE NEW YORK TIMESApril 27, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/nyregion/27death.html

A 41-year-old Queens man died early yesterday morning after police officers and medical workers responded to a 911 call that he was emotionally disturbed and acting irrationally, the police said.

The police said that they arrived at 104-36 204th Street in St. Albans, the home of the man, Patrick Ryan, after the 4:20 a.m. call, which came from his girlfriend. Seven officers sustained minor injuries trying to subdue Mr. Ryan, they said. He was strapped to a backboard and taken to Mary Immaculate Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:13 a.m., the authorities said.

The police said that they did not know the exact cause of death, and that the medical examiner would perform an autopsy.

Family members and friends, however, said they believed that Mr. Ryan, who they described as legally blind, died at the hands of the police before he was taken to the hospital. Family members estimated that as many as eight or nine officers tackled Mr. Ryan, and they said the ambulance that took him away did not have its siren on.

“The police killed my son, and I’m grieving,” said Justiana Reid, Mr. Ryan’s mother, who was downstairs in the house when the police arrived.

Family members said that Mr. Ryan could see only shadows and received disability checks. They added that his girlfriend was eight months pregnant.

13) For $82 a Day, Booking a Cell in a 5-Star JailBy JENNIFER STEINHAUERApril 29, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/us/29jail.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

SANTA ANA, Calif., April 25 — Anyone convicted of a crime knows a debt to society often must be paid in jail. But a slice of Californians willing to supplement that debt with cash (no personal checks, please) are finding that the time can be almost bearable.

For offenders whose crimes are usually relatively minor (carjackers should not bother) and whose bank accounts remain lofty, a dozen or so city jails across the state offer pay-to-stay upgrades. Theirs are a clean, quiet, if not exactly recherché alternative to the standard county jails, where the walls are bars, the fellow inmates are hardened and privileges are few.

Many of the self-pay jails operate like secret velvet-roped nightclubs of the corrections world. You have to be in the know to even apply for entry, and even if the court approves your sentence there, jail administrators can operate like bouncers, rejecting anyone they wish.

“I am aware that this is considered to be a five-star Hilton,” said Nicole Brockett, 22, who was recently booked into one of the jails, here in Orange County about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and paid $82 a day to complete a 21-day sentence for a drunken driving conviction.

Ms. Brockett, who in her oversize orange T-shirt and flip-flops looked more like a contestant on “The Real World” than an inmate, shopped around for the best accommodations, travelocity.com-style.

“It’s clean here,” she said, perched in a jail day room on the sort of couch found in a hospital emergency room. “It’s safe and everyone here is really nice. I haven’t had a problem with any of the other girls. They give me shampoo.”

For roughly $75 to $127 a day, these convicts — who are known in the self-pay parlance as “clients” — get a small cell behind a regular door, distance of some amplitude from violent offenders and, in some cases, the right to bring an iPod or computer on which to compose a novel, or perhaps a song.

Many of the overnighters are granted work furlough, enabling them to do most of their time on the job, returning to the jail simply to go to bed (often following a strip search, which granted is not so five-star).

The clients usually share a cell, but otherwise mix little with the ordinary nonpaying inmates, who tend to be people arrested and awaiting arraignment, or federal prisoners on trial or awaiting deportation and simply passing through.

The pay-to-stay programs have existed for years, but recently attracted some attention when prosecutors balked at a jail in Fullerton that they said would offer computer and cellphone use to George Jaramillo, a former Orange County assistant sheriff who pleaded no contest to perjury and misuse of public funds, including the unauthorized use of a county helicopter. Mr. Jaramillo was booked into the self-pay program in Montebello, near Los Angeles, instead.

“We certainly didn’t envision a jail with cellphone and laptop capabilities where his family could bring him three hot meals,” said Susan Kang Schroeder, the public affairs counsel for the Orange County district attorney. “We felt that the use of the computer was part of the instrumentality of his crime, and that is another reason we objected to that.”

A spokesman for the Fullerton jail said cellphones but not laptops were allowed.

While jails in other states may offer pay-to-stay programs, numerous jail experts said they did not know of any.

“I have never run into this,” said Ken Kerle, managing editor of the publication American Jail Association and author of two books on jails. “But the rest of the country doesn’t have Hollywood either. Most of the people who go to jail are economically disadvantaged, often mentally ill, with alcohol and drug problems and are functionally illiterate. They don’t have $80 a day for jail.”

The California prison system, severely overcrowded, teeming with violence and infectious diseases and so dysfunctional that much of it is under court supervision, is one that anyone with the slightest means would most likely pay to avoid.

“The benefits are that you are isolated and you don’t have to expose yourself to the traditional county system,” said Christine Parker, a spokeswoman for CSI, a national provider of jails that runs three in Orange County with pay-to-stay programs. “You can avoid gang issues. You are restricted in terms of the number of people you are encountering and they are a similar persuasion such as you.”

Most of the programs — which offer 10 to 30 beds — stay full enough that marketing is not necessary, though that was not always the case. The Pasadena jail, for instance, tried to create a little buzz for its program when it was started in the early 1990s.

“Our sales pitch at the time was, ‘Bad things happen to good people,’ ” said Janet Givens, a spokeswoman for the Pasadena Police Department. Jail representatives used Rotary Clubs and other such venues as their potential marketplace for “fee-paying inmate workers” who are charged $127 a day (payment upfront required).

“People might have brothers, sisters, cousins, etc., who might have had a lapse in judgment and do not want to go to county jail,” Ms. Givens said.

The typical pay-to-stay client, jail representatives agreed, is a man in his late 30s who has been convicted of driving while intoxicated and sentenced to a month or two in jail.

But there are single-night guests, and those who linger well over a year.

“One individual wanted to do four years here,” said Christina Holland, a correctional manager of the Santa Ana jail.

Inmates in Santa Ana who have been approved for pay to stay by the courts and have coughed up a hefty deposit for their stay, enter the jail through a lobby and not the driveway reserved for the arrival of other prisoners. They are strip searched when they return from work each day because the biggest problem they pose is the smuggling of contraband, generally cigarettes, for nonpaying inmates.

Most of the jailers require the inmates to do chores around the jails, even if they work elsewhere during the day.

Critics argue that the systems create inherent injustices, offering cleaner, safer alternatives to those who can pay.

“It seems to be to be a little unfair,” said Mike Jackson, the training manager of the National Sheriff’s Association. “Two people come in, have the same offense, and the guy who has money gets to pay to stay and the other doesn’t. The system is supposed to be equitable.”

But cities argue that the paying inmates generate cash, often hundreds of thousands of dollars a year — enabling them to better afford their other taxpayer-financed operations — and are generally easy to deal with.

“We never had a problem with self pay,” said Steve Lechuga, the operations manager for CSI. “I haven’t seen any fights in years. We had a really good success rate with them.”

Stanley Goldman, a professor of criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, has recommended the program to former clients.

“The prisoners who are charged with nonviolent crimes and typically have no record are not in the best position to handle themselves in the general county facility,” Professor Goldman said.

Still, no doubt about it, the self-pay jails are not to be confused with Canyon Ranch.

The cells at Santa Ana are roughly the size of a custodial closet, and share its smell and ambience. Most have little more than a pink bottle of jail-issue moisturizer and a book borrowed from the day room. Lockdown can occur for hours at a time, and just feet away other prisoners sit with their faces pressed against cell windows, looking menacing.

Ms. Brockett, who normally works as a bartender in Los Angeles, said the experience was one she never cared to repeat.

“It does look decent,” she said, “but you still feel exactly where you are.”

Reliance on abstinence-only sex education as the primary tool to reduce teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases — as favored by the Bush administration and conservatives in Congress — looks increasingly foolish and indefensible.

The abstinence-only campaign has always been driven more by ideology than by sound public health policy. The program’s tight rules, governing states that accept federal matching funds and community organizations that accept federal grants, forbid the promotion of contraceptive use and require teaching that sex outside marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.

At least nine states, by one count, have decided to give up the federal matching funds rather than submit to dictates that undermine sensible sex education. Now there is growing evidence that the programs have no effect on children’s sexual behavior.

A Congressionally mandated report issued this month by the Mathematica Policy Research firm found that elementary and middle school students in four communities who received abstinence instruction — sometimes on a daily basis — were just as likely to have sex in the following years as students who did not get such instruction. Those who became sexually active — about half of each group — started at the same age (14.9 years on average) and had the same number of sexual partners. The chief caveat is that none of the four programs studied continued the abstinence instruction into high school, the most sexually active period for most teenagers, so it is not known whether more sustained abstinence education would show more effectiveness.

Supporters of abstinence-only education sometimes point to a sharp decline in teenage pregnancy rates in recent years as proof that the programs must be working. But a paper by researchers at Columbia University and the Guttmacher Institute, published in the January issue of The American Journal of Public Health, attributed 86 percent of the decline to greater and more effective use of contraceptives — and only 14 percent to teenagers’ deciding to wait longer to start having sex. At the very least, that suggests that the current policy of emphasizing abstinence and minimizing contraceptive use should be turned around.

As Congress prepares to debate further financing, it should either drop the abstinence-only program as a waste of money or broaden it to include safe-sex instruction. Abstinence deserves to be part of a comprehensive sex education effort, but not the only part.

15) Somali Capital Now Calm After Month in Which 1,000 Were KilledBy JEFFREY GETTLEMANApril 28, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/world/africa/28somalia.html

NAIROBI, Kenya, April 27 — An eerie calm slipped over Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, on Friday for the first time in a month.

After intense combat that killed more than 1,000 people, insurgents melted back into the broken city, and hundreds of families began to return home.

The transitional Somali government claimed victory, saying that its troops had vanquished the insurgency and that peace and prosperity were just around the corner. “The fighting in Mogadishu is over,” said Abdikarim Farah, Somalia’s ambassador to Ethiopia, at a news conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

“Mogadishu was once called the Pearl of the Indian Ocean,” he said. “God willing, it will come to deserve that name again.”

On Friday, though, the city hardly looked like a pearl. Bodies covered with flies littered the streets, and many buildings were still smoking. Looters picked through the Coca-Cola factory, where a year’s supply of sugar was stolen.

In the past month the people of Mogadishu have endured some of the heaviest combat ever fought in the city, which like the rest of Somalia has gone 16 years without a functioning government.

Much of the fighting was artillery exchanges between Ethiopian-led forces backing the transitional government and insurgents connected to the Islamist movement that was recently ousted from power.

Civilians were caught in the cross-fire, and United Nations officials estimate that more than 350,000 people fled.

On Friday a trickle of them returned to inspect charred homes and bullet-pocked streets. The United Nations has ambitious plans to roll a convoy of trucks into Mogadishu and the surrounding area to feed hundreds of thousands of people. The first food shipment arrived Thursday.

But the insurgency is probably not over.

Instead, it seems, the insurgents have simply absorbed the same lesson that the Islamist militias learned in December when the conflict started: that undisciplined bands of young fighters are no match for better trained, better equipped Ethiopian soldiers.

“Their snipers were killing us left and right,” said Mohammed Isse, 45, a gunman who left an Islamist militia to join an insurgent group.

Mr. Isse estimated that Ethiopian soldiers had killed more than 800 insurgents. Still, he was unbowed. “We’re just going to switch tactics,” he said. “We’re thinking suicide bombs, kidnappings and attacks on government hotels.”

“Stuff like that,” he added.

Will Connors contributed reporting from Addis Ababa, and Yuusuf Maxamuud from Mogadishu.

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U.S. Launches Targeted Assassination Air Strikes in Somalia, Many Reported KilledTuesday, January 9th, 2007http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/09/1454252

16) Ethiopia bought arms from North Korea with U.S. assentBy Michael R. Gordon and Mark MazzettiSunday, April 8, 2007http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/08/news/arms.php

WASHINGTON: Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of that country's nuclear test, officials in the Bush administration allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from Pyongyang in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior U.S. officials.

The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopian troops were in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the U.S. policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.

U.S. officials said they were still encouraging Ethiopia to wean itself from its longstanding reliance on North Korea for cheap Soviet-era military equipment, and that Ethiopian officials appeared receptive.

But the arms deal is an example of the compromises that result from the clash of two foreign policy absolutes: the Bush administration's commitment to fighting Islamic radicalism and its effort to starve the North Korean government of money it could use to build up its nuclear weapons program.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as the administration has made counterterrorism its top foreign policy concern, the White House has sometimes shown a willingness to tolerate misconduct by allies that it might otherwise criticize, like human rights violations in Central Asia and anti-democratic crackdowns in some Arab nations.

Nor is this the first time the Bush administration has made an exception for allies in their dealings with Pyongyang. In 2002, the Spanish military intercepted a ship carrying Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen. At the time, Yemen was working with the United States to hunt members of Al Qaeda operating within its borders, and after its government protested, Washington asked that the freighter be released.

Yemen said at the time that the shipment was the last one from an earlier missile purchase, and that it would not be repeated.

U.S. officials from a number of agencies described details of the Ethiopia episode on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal Bush administration deliberations.

Several officials said they first learned that Ethiopia planned to receive a delivery of military cargo from North Korea when the country's government alerted the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, after the adoption on Oct. 14 of the UN Security Council measure imposing sanctions.

"The Ethiopians came back to us and said, 'Look, we know we need to transition to different customers, but we just can't do that overnight,' " said one U.S. official, who added that the issue had been handled properly.

U.S. intelligence agencies reported in late January that an Ethiopian cargo ship that was probably carrying tank parts and other military equipment had left a North Korean port.

The exact value of the shipment is unclear, but Ethiopia purchased $20 million dollars worth of arms from North Korea in 2001, according to U.S. estimates.

After a brief debate in Washington, the decision was made not to block the arms deal and to press Ethiopia not to make future purchases.

John Bolton, who helped to push the sanctions resolution through the Security Council in October before stepping down as UN ambassador, said the Ethiopians had long known that Washington was concerned about their arms purchases from North Korea and that the Bush administration should not have tolerated the January shipment.

"To make it clear to everyone how strongly we feel on this issue we should have gone to the Ethiopians and said they should send it back," said Bolton, who said he was unaware of the deal before being contacted for this article. "I know they have been helpful in Somalia, but there is a nuclear weapons program in North Korea that is unhelpful for everybody worldwide.

"Never underestimate the strength of 'clientitis' at the State Department," said Bolton, using Washington jargon for a situation in which State Department officials are deemed to be overly sympathetic to the countries with which they conduct diplomacy.

Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, declined to comment on the specifics of the arms shipment but said the United States was "deeply committed to upholding and enforcing UN Security Council resolutions." Repeated efforts to contact the Ethiopian Embassy were unsuccessful.

In other cases, the United States has been strict in enforcing the Security Council resolution. U.S. intelligence agencies tracked a North Korean freighter suspected of carrying illicit weapons and pressed several nations to refuse to allow the ship to dock. The government of Myanmar finally allowed it to anchor and insisted that officials had found no cargo that violated the resolution.

North Korea conducted its first nuclear test on Oct. 9. The Security Council resolution, adopted less than a week later, was hailed by President George W. Bush as "swift and tough" and a "clear message to the leader of North Korea regarding his weapons programs."

In 2005, the Bush administration told Ethiopia and other African nations that it wanted them to phase out their purchases from North Korea. But the Security Council resolution put an international imprimatur on the earlier U.S. request, and the administration sought to reinforce the message.

In late January, the CIA reported that the Tekeze, a vessel flying the flag of Ethiopia, had left a North Korean port and that its cargo probably included "tank parts," among other military equipment. U.S. officials said the Ethiopians acknowledged that the ship was en route and said they needed the military equipment to sustain their Soviet-era military.

Ethiopia has a longstanding border dispute with Eritrea, but it was also focused on neighboring Somalia, an issue of greater concern to Washington. Islamic forces there had taken over Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, six months earlier and were attacking Baidoa, the seat of a relatively powerless transitional government that was formed with the support of the United Nations.

The timing of the shipment was awkward. The Ethiopian military began an offensive in Somalia to drive back the Islamic forces and install the transitional government in Mogadishu late last year, and the United States was providing it with detailed intelligence about the positions of the Islamic forces and had positioned navy ships off Somalia's coast to capture fighters trying to escape the battlefield by sea.

After some internal debate, the Bush administration decided not to make an issue of the cargo ship.

U.S. officials insist that they are keeping up the pressure on Ethiopia. While Ethiopia has not provided an ironclad assurance that it will accept no more arms shipments from North Korea, it has told the United States that it will look for other weapons suppliers.

17) San Francisco Bay Area Reacts Angrily to Series of Immigration RaidsBy JESSE McKINLEYApril 28, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/washington/28immig.html?ref=us

SAN FRANCISCO, April 27 — It was not the typical Bay Area morning. Before dawn on March 6, dozens of federal immigration agents conducted surprise raids in San Rafael and nearby Novato, two comfortable Marin County suburbs where the idea of early morning excitement usually involves a trip to Starbucks.

The raids are part of the government’s Operation Return to Sender, in which more than 23,000 people have been arrested nationwide, including more than 1,800 in Northern and Central California, immigration officials said.

And while the raids have upset many pro-immigrant groups nationwide, that displeasure has been particularly acute in the Bay Area, a region that generally bends left politically and where many cities consider themselves so-called “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants.

“These people have been here many, many years and they have an investment in the community,” said Mayor Al Boro of San Rafael, a city of about 56,000 residents, a quarter of whom are Latino. “And we need to respect that.”

Several city councils have passed resolutions expressing their anger about the raids, and local religious leaders have issued stern proclamations. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, for example, said in late March that they were inhumane and called for their immediate end. The raids have also led to protests in several cities, with another round planned for Tuesday in the area’s three largest cities: San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland.

The raids have even upset people in more conservative regions to the east. In Mendota, an agricultural town in the Central Valley that calls itself the “Cantaloupe Center of the World,” the City Council passed a resolution last month condemning them. The raids, according to the resolution, had driven much-needed migrant workers underground and caused “emotional turmoil and financial hardship.”

In Richmond, another economically challenged city just east across the bay from San Francisco, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, a member of the Green Party, wrote a bill restating an ordinance that prohibits city employees from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. It passed the City Council unanimously in February.

That sanctuary sentiment was also echoed on Sunday in a speech by Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, a Democrat, who repeated his city’s noncooperative status, a move that drew a rebuke from a Republican lawmaker in Washington, Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who called the mayor’s actions “a clear and direct violation of the law.”

The anti-raid sentiments have also energized some opponents of immigration. A recent protest in San Rafael was also attended by nearly 100 members of anti-immigrant groups, including members of the Northern California chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group that advocates stronger borders.

Much of the debate has been focused in San Rafael, a genial bayside commuter city about 20 miles north of San Francisco. Shortly after the raids, Mr. Boro sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, saying they had “left our city in turmoil,” with residents now distrustful of the police and children fearful of losing their parents.

“Waking people up in the dark of night, at 5 a.m., in their homes seems more like a scare tactic than a law enforcement necessity,” Mr. Boro wrote.

Calls to the local police have decreased in recent weeks, Mr. Boro said, and he attributed the dropoff to the immigration raids’ “chilling effect because people think our police were involved.”

Educators in San Rafael said the raids sent schools into “a state of emergency” as American-born children were suddenly without one or both parents who had been caught up in the sweeps. Shortly afterward, absenteeism at school spiked, and school officials asked teachers and others to ride buses with students to make sure a caregiver picked them up.

A school board member, Jenny Callaway, said she feared that test scores of anxiety-ridden students would suffer. “Our charge is to provide a quality education regardless of citizenship,” Ms. Callaway said. “How do we do this when children are afraid to come to the bus stop?”

One student caught up in the raids was 7-year-old Kebin Reyes, who was with his father, Noe, when he was arrested early in the morning of March 6. Mr. Reyes, 37, a Guatemalan, said that after his arrest, he was not allowed to call relatives to come to pick up his son, and that they both were held all day in a locked room at the offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Francisco, an experience he says left his son traumatized.

“Before the arrest, my son was very friendly and would speak to most anyone, very active,” Mr. Reyes said, through a translator. “Since the day of the arrest, Kebin has turned to be very reserved and quiet and not as open to speak to anyone.”

On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of Kebin, who was born in the United States and is an American citizen, charging that federal authorities had violated his constitutional rights. Immigration officials would not comment on the specifics of the case, but said agents had acted appropriately.

“When we encounter minors in the course of an enforcement action, we will not leave them unattended,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the immigration agency. “This young man was not arrested; he was transported along with this father to the I.C.E. office, where he was supervised until a family member came to get him.”

Immigration agency officials say Mr. Reyes was ordered deported in 2000, the same year his son was born. He is fighting that order, and a hearing is scheduled in June. But there is no question, Mr. Reyes said, about his son’s status.

“My son has the same rights as any American citizen,” he said. “He is born here in California.”

Nine months after falling victim to an illness that many U.S. analysts assumed would prove fatal, Fidel Castro appears to have come back from death's door to resume some leadership responsibilities and rein in Cuba's would-be reformers.

He's receiving visiting dignitaries, not just friends such as Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez but official delegations, including one last week led by a senior figure in the Chinese Communist Party, Wu Guanzheng.

Castro's name is again attached to editorials for Cuba's state-run media, ones in which the U.S. government is lambasted for freeing an accused terrorist and Brazil is criticized for using food crops for ethanol production when they could be feeding Latin America's poor.

And, to the alarm of veteran Cuba-watchers who sensed a new degree of openness to economic change during Castro's absence, the apparently reinvigorated revolutionary is now believed to be blocking moves to let Cubans open small businesses.

U.S. analysts of Cuban developments acknowledge that they know little about Castro's illness or the degree of his recuperation. His personal secretary said he was suffering from intestinal bleeding when he handed over power last summer to his brother Raul. U.S. intelligence sources have speculated that he has cancer.

But the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported the most detailed and plausible version of his prolonged medical attention, citing unidentified doctors familiar with Castro's case. The newspaper said the Cuban president had undergone three surgeries to remove infected intestinal tissue and became gravely ill when the incisions failed to heal and the infection spread to his stomach.

Since July 31, when Raul Castro, the defense minister and first vice president, took over for his older brother, state-authorized media exposes on rampant corruption and the younger Castro's public criticism of shortages in food, transportation and housing have hinted at internal review of Cuba's political and economic system, said Phil Peters, vice president of the Lexington Institute near Washington and a veteran analyst of Cuban affairs.

Raul, the pragmatist

Raul Castro has a reputation for pragmatism about private enterprise within the state-run economy, having inaugurated many of the island's most successful hard currency-earning joint ventures in tourism in the early 1990s, when the country was reeling from the sudden cutoff of Soviet aid.

After Fidel Castro was too sick even to make an appearance at the September summit in Havana of the Non-Aligned Movement or at his delayed 80th birthday celebrations in December, the government said that a thorough review was underway to identify, and presumably correct, flaws in the communist ideology guiding the country.

"Now it looks like cold water's getting poured over all that," Peters said. "That, to me, is the clearest sign that Fidel Castro is getting better and getting closer to coming back to office."

Castro remains staunchly critical of income disparities among Cubans, including the estimated $1 billion in annual remittances from relatives abroad that are believed to benefit as much as a third of the island's population.

State salaries average about $15 a month for most workers, so the $100 a month that Cubans in the United States can legally send their relatives in Cuba has created a class divide between those who receive dollars and those who do not.

Also prospering out of proportion to those in state enterprises are the thousands of entrepreneurs who secured licenses during the early 1990s that allowed them to open private restaurants, pensions and consumer services that cater to the 2 million foreign visitors to Cuba each year.

Castro revoked many of those private-enterprise licenses three years ago and imposed withering taxes, just before he ordered the removal of the U.S. dollar from circulation in Cuba and replaced it with a new national currency called the convertible peso, which has no value outside Cuba.

Hopes of an expansion in self-employment were buoyed last fall when Raul Castro began speaking out in interviews and speeches against the government's inability to properly provide for its 11.2 million citizens.

Those hopes were dashed, at least for the short term, this month when Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, architect of the early 1990s reforms, parroted Fidel Castro's condemnation of "social distortions" in a speech to a Communist youth group. Cuban media also reported recently that the academic commission assigned to examine problems with state ownership wouldn't deliver its verdict for three years.

Peters believes the debate opened late last year will continue "airing out all kinds of dirty laundry" and putting pressure on the leadership to make course corrections.

"Carlos Lage also said, 'We, the Cuban government, no longer pay a just wage that allows people to cover their basic needs,' " Peters said. "You can only say that so many times before you have to come up with a solution to the problems."

Damian J. Fernandez, head of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University in Miami, agrees that a Pandora's box of ideological debate has been opened that will eventually lead to change.

"People are talking in Cuba. When the talk is going to materialize into action, I don't know. But this moment of succession, the transfer of power, has broadened the parameters of what is discussable, what is permissible," he said. "There are still parameters, but the borderlines are fuzzier."

Cubans remain patient

Still, Castro's return to the power structure would put a damper on the debate, he said.

"To have an open, full-fledged discussion on the future, Castro would have to be gone," Fernandez said.

Other analysts say the seesawing on reform could threaten Cuba's relative social peace. Although Cubans privately express a hunger for more opportunity to improve their living standards, they have remained patient throughout Castro's rigid opposition to capitalist activity, including the types of business now allowed in allied Vietnam and China.

"He's in the way," Frank Mora, a professor of national security strategy at the National War College, said of Castro's apparent return to the policymaking arena. "He's prolonging a real transition. Whatever support Raul has been able to build can run out quickly if he's not able to deliver the goods."

However, he said, Cubans have shown little inclination to challenge their system in the way Eastern Europeans did two decades ago with pro-democracy marches and protests. There also is no discernible divide in the Cuban political or military elite, Mora said, that could be exploited by pro-democracy advocates, who are few and fearful since a major crackdown on dissent four years ago.

Although Cuba-watchers differ in their forecasts of whether Fidel Castro will resume full power, they agree he is making at least a partial leadership comeback. By Communist protocol, the head of the Cuban party should have received the Wu delegation--a role Castro signed over to his brother nine months ago.

"At least the PR campaign is that he is trying to get back in the saddle," Fernandez said. "Can he mount the horse as totally as in the past? I think that's unlikely. But he can still have a lot of influence."

What is the elder Castro's motivation for reasserting control despite advancing age, persistent infirmities and his own stated need to groom a new generation of leaders?

Where is the outrage over military rape?http://www.counterpunch.org/nader04162007.html

BILL MOYERS SPECIAL -- 'BUYING THE WAR' -- PART 1-16Bill Moyers special on how the press contributed to the selling of the Iraq War.1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyQ1L0EuNoQ2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnFNKhUmbpY3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rajv95ZtuDs4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXS_2raGlUc5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiuZfaVr53Y6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne23p-LICCk7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5rQX5ESA348. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWURC2t7Mg89. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhQJJNWxY7Q10.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NpvO1CrfSg11.[Skip this one -- it's the same as Part 10]12.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FhZDL9ece413.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSOk8pq9hRs14.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxeUJ02fWk415.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faf1Nws6F4g16.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqGBHNp30B8

Soldiers Indicted in KillingBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESSMADRID, April 27 (AP) — A judge indicted three American soldiers on Friday in the 2003 death of a Spanish journalist who was killed when their tank fired at a hotel in Baghdad.Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp were charged with homicide in the death of the journalist, José Manuel Couso Permuy, and with “a crime against the international community,” defined as an indiscriminate or excessive attack against civilians during war.At the time of the shooting, the three soldiers were from the Army’s Third Infantry Division, based in Fort Stewart, Ga. April 28, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/world/europe/28spain.html

C.I.A. Held Qaeda Leader in Secret Jail for MonthsBy MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID S. CLOUD"WASHINGTON, April 27 — The Central Intelligence Agency held a captured Qaeda leader in a secret prison since last fall and transferred him last week to the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Friday."April 28, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/washington/28prisoner.html

Army Officer Accuses Generals of "Intellectual and Moral Failures"http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042707A.shtml

ONE UNEXPLODED BOMB PER PERSONBy Dahr Jamail, Electronic Lebanon"SRIFA, Southern Lebanon, 27 April (IPS) - Close to amillion unexploded bombs are estimated to litter southernLebanon, according to UN forces engaged in the hazardoustask of removing them. The United Nations Interim Force InLebanon (UNIFIL) was created by the Security Council in1978 to confirm an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon andrestore international peace and security. After the warlast year it has a new job on its hands."27 April 2007http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6843.shtml

CCR FILES CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT ON BEHALF OF THREE BLACK COPWATCH ACTIVISTS ARRESTED WHILE MONITORING POLICE ACTIVITY"Lawsuit Filed as NYPD Data Shows Police Stops Increased by More than 500 Percent between 2002 and 2006, with Blacks Comprising More than Half of All Stops"http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=ACMSs0MD9o&Content=1006

Case of Police Videotaping Is Back in the Public EyeBy ALAN FEUERApril 27, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/nyregion/27police.html

Manhattan: Housing Law Struck DownBy JANNY SCOTTJustice Marilyn Shafer of State Supreme Court yesterday struck down the Tenant Empowerment Act, a 2005 New York City law giving tenants in subsidized rental buildings the right of first refusal to buy their buildings if the owners decide to sell or quit rental assistance programs like Mitchell-Lama. Justice Shafer said she “reluctantly” concluded that the city cannot limit rights granted to building owners by the State Legislature in allowing them to withdraw from Mitchell-Lama. The Legislature itself could choose to protect middle- and low-income tenants in those buildings, she pointed out. “In failing to do so, or to permit the City of New York to do so, the State Legislature has failed the residents of the City of New York,” she wrote in her opinion.April 25, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/nyregion/25mbrfs-housing.html

Guantánamo Detainee ChargedBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESSA Canadian detained in Afghanistan and held at Guantánamo Bay since 2002 was charged with murder. The detainee, Omar Khadr, 20, is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a Special Forces soldier while fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and planting mines aimed at American convoys. The military charged him with murder, providing support to terrorism, attempted murder, conspiracy and spying.April 25, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/washington/25brfs-gitmo.html

Chavez Asks UN to Intervene in Posada Case"CARACAS — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez asked the United Nations on Sunday to intervene in the case of international terrorist Luis Posada Carrilles, placed in freedom last week by the United States government.Speaking on his Alo Presidente TV and radio program, Chavez called the decision to release Posada embarrassing and proof of the double standard by the US government on the issue of terrorism.Chavez reiterated Venezuela’s demand that Posada be extradited to the South American country to stand trial for organizing a 1976 plane bombing that killed 73 persons.The outcry against the freeing of the terrorist was echoed in several countries around the world.Upon arriving for a visit to Havana, Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov, chairman of the Central Executive Committee of Russia's Communist Party, said the release of Posada exceeds the limits of cynicism and shame.La Opinion, the Los Angeles Spanish language newspaper, ran an editorial Sunday calling the release of Posada a defeat of the US legal system and adds that the move sends a contradictory message from the US government.In Haiti, Dr. Jean Renald Clerisme, minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship, said the release of the terrorist was an insult to justice. "This man deserves to be brought to justice and there is no doubt that the world has already condemned him".In Moscow, the Russian Venceremos Movement, made up of different leftwing parties, and labor and civic organizations, delivered a message to the United States Embassy in which it repudiates the freeing of Posada Carriles on bail. (Taken from Granma Daily)."http://www.escambray.cu/Eng/Special/Posada%20Carriles-Bush/Cchavez070423409.htm

If You Want to Know if Spot Loves You So, It’s in His TailBy SANDRA BLAKESLEEApril 24, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/science/24wag.html?ref=science

California: City Won’t Aid Immigration OfficialsBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESSPolice officers and other city employees will not help federal immigration authorities seeking to round up and deport illegal immigrant workers in San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom said Sunday. The mayor told a predominantly Hispanic audience at St. Peter’s Church that while city and state officials could not stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement from conducting sweeps in the city, he would do everything within his power to discourage them. “We are a sanctuary city, make no mistake about it,” Mr. Newsom said.April 24, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/us/24brfs-sf.html

"Is It Too Late to Get Out?"Housing Bubble BoondoggleBy MIKE WHITNEYApril 24, 2007http://www.counterpunch.com/whitney04242007.html

An island made by global warmingBy Michael McCarthy, Environmental EditorPublished: 24 April 2007http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2480994.ece

Lower Manhattan, Higher Testosterone"Since 2000, men, mostly between ages 25 and 44, have accounted for more than three-fourths of the population increase in Lower Manhattan. As a result, according to a special census calculation, the sex ratio there increased to 126 men per 100 women in 2005, from 101 men per 100 women in 2000. In the rest of Manhattan, and in the city over all, there were only 90 men for every 100 women."By SAM ROBERTSApril 22, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/22downtown.html?ref=nyregion

A Good Provider Is One Who LeavesBy JASON DePARLEApril 22, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22Workers.t.html?ref=world

War Resister Agustin Aguayo Released "Army medic Agustin Aguayo was released this week aftermore than six months in military custody for refusingto deploy to Iraq a second time.Aguayo went AWOL for weeks after refusing the order.He was taken into military custody and jailed afterturning himself in. We speak with Agustin Aguayo'swife, Helga."Listen/Watch/Readhttp://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/20/1336213

Mike Farrell of M*A*S*H on His Journey to Actor andActivist "Actor Mike Farrell is perhaps best known for his roleas Captain B.J.Hunnicutt in the popular TV seriesM*A*S*H. But aside from that, he is alsoknown for his decades of social justice activism.Farrell has just come out with a new book called "JustCall Me Mike: A Journey to Actor andActivist."Listen/Watch/Readhttp://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/20/1336220

Maryland: Bodies of Miners Are FoundBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESSWorkers found the bodies of two miners trapped when a wall section collapsed in an open-pit coal mine in western Maryland, a federal mine official said. The official, Bob Cornett, acting regional director for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, said the men, one of whom was found in a backhoe, and the other, found in a bulldozer, appeared to have died instantly. The cause of the collapse was under investigation. Mr. Cornett said heavy rain and the ground’s freezing and thawing could be a factor. The mine, about 150 miles west of Baltimore, has had no fatal injuries since at least 1995 and was not cited for violations in its most recent inspection, which began March 5, according the federal mine agency.April 21, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21brfs-BODIESOFMINE_BRF.html

Fish-Killing Virus Spreading in the Great LakesBy SUSAN SAULNY"CHICAGO, April 20 — A virus that has already killed tens of thousands of fish in the eastern Great Lakes is spreading, scientists said, and now threatens almost two dozen aquatic species over a wide swath of the lakes and nearby waterways."April 21, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21fish.html

A Lot of Uninvited GuestsInter Press ServiceDahr Jamail"DAMASCUS, Apr 18 (IPS) - The massive influx of Iraqi refugees into Syria has brought rising prices and overcrowding, but most Syrians seem to have accepted more than a million of the refugees happily enough."http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/syria/000571.php

Almost Human, and Sometimes SmarterBy JOHN NOBLE WILFORDApril 17, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17chimp.html

Housing Slump Takes a Toll on Illegal ImmigrantsBy EDUARDO PORTER"HURON, Calif. — Some of the casualties of America’s housing bust are easy to spot up and down California’s Central Valley."April 17, 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/business/17construct.html?hp

The National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) demands the immediate release of political prisoner, Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Although Dr. Al-Arian is no longer on a hunger strike we must still demandhe be released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). After an earlier plea agreement that absolved Dr. Al-Arian from any further questioning, he was sentenced up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury in Virginia. He has long sense served his time yet Dr. Al-Arian is still being held. Release him now!

See:http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/16/1410255

ACTION:

We ask all people of conscience to demand the immediate release and end to Dr. Al- Arian's suffering.

Criminalizing Solidarity: Sami Al-Arian and the War ofTerrorBy Charlotte Kates, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2007http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6767.shtml

Related:

Robert Fisk: The true story of free speech in AmericaThis systematic censorship of Middle East reality continues even in schoolsPublished: 07 April 2007 http://news. independent. co.uk/world/ fisk/article2430 125.ece

'My son lived a worthwhile life'In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three small children. Nine months later, he died, having never recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army accountable for his death and the book she has written in his memory. Monday March 26, 2007The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2042968,00.html

"A War Budget Leaves Every Child Behind."[A T-shirt worn by some teachers at Roosevelt High Schoolin L.A. as part of their campaign to rid the school of militaryrecruiters and JROTC--see Article in Full item number 4, below...bw]

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT VIDEO DESTRIBUTED BY U.S. LABOR AGAINST THE WAR (USLAW) FEATURING SPEAKERS AT THE JANUARY 27TH MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND - BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW.http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6935451906479097836&hl=en

"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today. Not one of them is Cuban."(A sign in Havana)VenceremosView sign at bottom of page at:http://www.cubasolidarity.net/index.html[Thanks to Norma Harrison for sending this...bw]

CENTENNIAL, CO -- A new documentary film based on an award-winning documentary short film, "The Sand Creek Massacre", and driven by Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people who tell their version about what happened during the Sand Creek Massacre via their oral histories, has been released by Olympus Films+, LLC, a Centennial, Colorado film company.

"You have done an extraordinary job" said Margie Small, Tobient Entertainment, " on the Colorado PBS episode, the library videos for public schools and libraries, the trailer, etc...and getting the story told and giving honor to those ancestors who had to witness this tragic and brutal attack...film is one of the best ways."

"The images shown in the film were selected for native awareness value" said Donald L. Vasicek, award-winning writer/filmmaker, "we also focused on preserving American history on film because tribal elders are dying and taking their oral histories with them. The film shows a non-violent solution to problem-solving and 19th century Colorado history, so it's multi-dimensional in that sense. "

Chief Eugene Blackbear, Sr., Cheyenne, who starred as Chief Black Kettle in "The Last of the Dogmen" also starring Tom Berenger and Barbara Hershey and "Dr. Colorado", Tom Noel, University of Colorado history professor, are featured.

The trailer can be viewed and the film can be ordered for $24.95 plus $4.95 for shipping and handling at http://www.fullduck.com/node/53.

Vasicek's web site, http://www.donvasicek.com, provides detailed information about the Sand Creek Massacre including various still images particularly on the Sand Creek Massacre home page and on the proposal page.

Olympus Films+, LLC is dedicated to writing and producing quality products that serve to educate others about the human condition.

[The Scab"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab.""A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles." "When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out.""No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself." A scab has not."Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commision in the british army." The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled promise from his employer.Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class."Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)...Roland Sheppard http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret]

END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!Stop funding Israel's war against PalestineComplete the form at the website listed below with your information.https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr003=cga2p2o6x1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=177

On November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado troops savagely slaughteredover 450 Cheyenne children, disabled, elders, and women in thesoutheastern Colorado Territory under its protection. This actbecame known as the Sand Creek Massacre. This film project("The Sand Creek Massacre" documentary film project) is anexamination of an open wound in the souls of the Cheyennepeople as told from their perspective. This project chroniclesthat horrific 19th century event and its affect on the 21st centurystruggle for respectful coexistence between white and nativeplains cultures in the United States of America.

Listed below are links on which you can click to get the latest news,products, and view, free, "THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE" award-winning documentary short. In order to create more nativeawareness, particularly to save the roots of America's history,please read the following:

Some people in America are trying to save the world. Blessthem. In the meantime, the roots of America are dying.What happens to a plant when the roots die? The plant diesaccording to my biology teacher in high school. American'sroots are its native people. Many of America's native peopleare dying from drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, hunger,and disease, which was introduced to them by the Caucasianmale. Tribal elders are dying. When they die, their oralhistories go with them. Our native's oral histories are theessence of the roots of America, what took place beforeour ancestors came over to America, what is taking place,and what will be taking place. It is time we replenishAmerica's roots with native awareness, else Americacontinues its decaying, and ultimately, its death.

You can help. The 22-MINUTE SAND CREEK MASSACREDOCUMENTARY PRESENTATION/EDUCATIONAL DVD ISREADY FOR PURCHASE! (pass the word about this powerfuleducational tool to friends, family, schools, parents, teachers,and other related people and organizations to contactme (dvasicek@earthlink.net, 303-903-2103) for informationabout how they can purchase the DVD and have me cometo their children's school to show the film and to interactin a questions and answers discussion about the SandCreek Massacre.